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Gillian Jacobs on a ‘Community’ movie, Judd Apatow & her dream role

Beloved comedic star Gillian Jacobs chats with Larry about the trials and tribulations of making it in Hollywood, the possibility of a ‘Community’ movie, and what it’s like working alongside Judd Apatow and Lena Dunham. Plus, what role did Gillian most regret turning down?

“I have never drank in my life. I’m a very boring person who likes to go home and go to bed early so they couldn’t have found someone more ill-suited for the part.” — Gillian Jacobs how she was ‘type-casted’

“[Mickey and Gus] They meet at the beginning of the show and they sort of dance around dating. He’s a neurotic, rule-following, wannabe writer who works as an on-set tutor for child actors. My character, as you can tell, is a bit more wild and she works at a radio station and they’re really attracted to each other but they’re total opposites so they have a very bumpy road to love.” — Gillian Jacobs on the premise of ‘Love’

“We were there at NBC during a very rocky time and somehow we hung on. We did our final season for Yahoo but we made it passed a hundred episodes which is really a miracle for our show. It worked because the writing was original, funny, the characters really felt different and people I think saw themselves and their friends in the show. And it was really a show for misfits and outsiders and it found that audience and people were incredibly loyal to it.” — Gillian Jacobs on ‘Community’ and why she thinks the show worked.

“They wanted to do 30 for 30 style documentaries but about statistics and computing and tech. One of the producers had heard a reference to this woman named Grace Hopper who is one of the most famous women in computer science but she’s still pretty unknown to the general public. And so he asked me if I would make a documentary about her…She joined the Navy during WWII. They had this program called waves which is a female volunteer program. And because she had been professor of math at Vassar, they placed her on this secret computer at Harvard called the Mark II- Mark I, Mark II - and after that she joined the computing industry at the very beginning stages of it.” — Gillian Jacobs on Grace Hopper, the computer programming pioneer that inspired the short documentary ‘The Queen of Code’, which she directed.

“Some other cast members of Community had directed 30 for 30 shorts- Danny Pudi, Ken Jeong- so I said, ‘If you’re giving actors with no directing experience directing jobs, sign me up.’ So Dan Silver thought of me when he heard about this woman named Grace Hopper and so I sort of fell in love with her and the whole area of women in technology; women in computing.” — Gillian Jacobs on directing ‘The Queen of Code.’

“Constantly. I’m an actor…I really started to try to internalize the fact that I can’t force everyone to like me, so I should just try and be happy with myself.” — Gillian Jacobs on her essay in Lenny Letter and how she learned to cope with her insecurities.

Larry King: “What do you think of Donald Trump?”

Gillian Jacobs: (smiles)

Larry King: “You have no opinion?”

Gillian Jacobs: (laughs) Um, next question?

“Amazing. She really has this incredible ability to inspire people around her to do their best work. It was a very happy easygoing set. People seemed to be in a good mood and you can always tell the quality of a boss by what kind of mood the crew is in.” — Gillian Jacobs on working with Lena Dunham.

“So ‘Don’t Think Twice’ is a film about an improv comedy troupe. It stars myself, Keegan-Michael Key of Key and Peele, Mike Birbiglia who made this other film called ‘Don’t Think Twice’ and the theater at which we perform shuts down and it sort of creates a crisis for all of these characters because they never really made it in the improv or acting world. And now it’s sort of a crisis of are they gonna continue in this or is it time to sort of grow up and move on.” — Gillian Jacobs on the upcoming film ‘Don’t Think Twice’